The Jesus Prayer

'Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy upon me, a sinner.'

The Prayer of the Heart

'The more rain falls on the earth, the softer it makes it; similarly,
Christ's holy name gladdens the earth of our heart the more we call upon it.'
-St. Hesychois the Priest, from the Philokalia

To cry out to God with adept longing is known to most Christians as the act
of prayer: to bring before Him all one's sorrows, all one's joys, all one's
thankfulness and all one's needs. We come to God through Christ, with the aid of
His saints, with petitions both of joy and of supplication, of abundance and of
want. Prayer is a divine dialogue between humanity and its Creator, in which the
Maker of All hears the voice of that which His hands have formed, and responds
in loving compassion to that voice. Such is indeed a worthy and valid form of
prayer. Our Liturgy and services are filled with such supplications, prayed in
reverence and surity to a God who hears. We would all do well to increase the
fervour with which we offer such prayers to Christ.

The Mother of God

Yet such is not the only form of prayer. There is another manner in which the
work of creation comes before his God, by which each human person is able to
behold God face to face, to draw closer unto Him in perfect union and communion.
It is a prayer beyond mere adoration, beyond supplication, beyond words
themselves. It is truly worldess prayer, wrought from the heart itself, wherein
the whole person communes with God directly, in purity, and realizes his
salvation. Such prayer is that which the Fathers call the prayer of the heart,
or the Jesus Prayer.

It was Paul, Apostle of Christ, who had instructed the faithful at
Thessaloniki and throughout the world to 'pray without ceasing' (1 Thess 5.17).
Over a millennium later, a poor pilgrim on the Russian steppe wandered into a
Sunday Liturgy and heard these words proclaimed. The command pierced him to the
core. How does one pray without ceasing? If prayer is conversation or dialogue,
as he had long understood it to be, how could it be possible to engage in such
an activity at all times, through all the events of daily life and social
interaction?

The pilgrim's story is told in the classic work of Russian folk lore, The Way
of the Pilgrim. His engagement in finding an answer to this question brought him
to the discovery of the Philokalia, the central work on Orthodox spirituality
and prayer. With the Scriptures and this collected text in hand, he placed
himself under the guidance of an experienced elder and engaged in a struggle to
develop inner prayer that would occupy the whole of his life.

Engaging in inner prayer is a task to which every Christian is called. Paul's
command to pray without ceasing applies to each Christian today, as much as it
did to those in the Church at Thessaloniki. We are called to intimate communion
with the Creator of Life, such that there is no moment when our souls and bodies
are not enlightened by Him. It was St Evagrios of Pontos who wrote that 'prayer
is the communion of the intellect with God,' and it becomes our task to
transform our prayer from mere words, mere petitions, to the direct communion of
the depths of our hearts and beings with God Himself.

One of the greatest tools by which the Church has encouraged this
transformation in the individual prayers of its faithful has been through use of
the Jesus Prayer. Its formula is simple: 'Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have
mercy on me, a sinner.' Yet this short phrase is not meant to be an end in and
of itself, but rather a tool for a changed life of prayer. Its repetition,
frequent and regular, causes the mind and heart to become accustomed to the
continual outcry to God, until, in God's good time, one's whole being begins to
realize its intimate proximity to God at all times.

The Jesus Prayer is a tool for all, meant for use by all. Below are a few of
the classic texts on the Prayer and its use (e.g., those by Princess Ileana of
Romania and St. Ignatios Brianchaninov), as well as newer discourses and
discussions.